Storykiller (41 page)

A hush had fallen over the room.

Whether anyone believed her or not, she had gotten their attention.

“He has raised an army that is going to crush you and your little band of misfits, Scion,” Circe said, raising a dismissive hand to the crew of Stories and Mortals standing behind Tessa. “Even you,” she said, fixing her big green eyes on Micah.

Tessa searched for her voice, afraid it would come out an ineffectual squeak, “I’ve killed all of your Draugr.”

“There’s more where those came from,” Circe said, unconcerned, and then narrowed her eyes at Tessa.
“There’s always more when you’re trading in the dead.”

“Well, it ends now,” Tessa said, reaching for the broadsword on the nearby table and raising it to Circe’s throat.

“Oh,
darling,” Circe sang. “It ends when we say it ends.”

And before Tessa’s eyes, she disappeared in a snap of golden light.

After Circe disappeared, Tessa went into the backyard and cursed for roughly ten minutes without taking a breath. “I hate magic!” (along with every expletive in the book) was the general
theme.

When Tessa rejoined the group in the kitchen, Fenris had disappeared again. “Typical,” Tessa muttered, and then directed her attention at the rest of the crew.

The group looked back at her and Tessa blinked.

She was so tired.

They must be too. They must be scared. Who wouldn’t be with her leading the charge? She had no idea what she was doing and Circe had called her on it.

She had been right.

Tessa released a long sigh and looked at the clock on the wall, it was late. “Everyone go home. Get some rest. We’ll regroup later.” As a unit, they hesitated and looked at one another and then started to get up without a word. As he walked past her, Tessa pulled Brand aside.

“After you get some rest, do your hacker thing, search for other places Circe might be hiding, scour the city for her, okay?”

Brand nodded and put a comforting hand on hers. “It’ll be okay, Tess,” he said, and for a moment Tessa almost believed him. After everyone had left, Tessa went to the backyard, filled with zombie bodies and heads. She began piling them up. Robin joined her after a few minutes.

“Do you want me to stay?” Robin asked, unsure.

Tessa didn’t look up. “Yes. Very much. Which…is why you should probably go,” she said, resigned. He nodded.

“I agree. I don’t want to and it may physically kill me to leave, but I agree.” He smiled at her and she smiled back. He moved forward to kiss her and then, seeming to think better of it, just kissed the palm of her hand. “I have to go now or I’m never leaving.”

“Yeah,” Tessa said, thinking that she was going to need the coldest shower ever later. Of course, dragging headless zombie bodies around a yard and burning them in a huge funeral pyre was a good way to kill the libido too. She got back to work.

Halfway through, she stopped. “Fenris,” she said, standing up straight but not turning around.

“See, less stealthy,” he teased, sliding up beside her.

Tessa ignored him and tossed another body on the pile. He helped, wordlessly, and she was glad for it, both his help and his silence. Half an hour later, Tessa lit them on fire. She would be lucky if the smoke didn’t bring the police and the fire department. Tessa stood, watching the blaze of the mythical Norse zombies with the Big Bad Wolf at her side, and her head spun yet again at the utter absurdity that was her life.

She honestly couldn’t stop to think about it. Her life looked so foreign to her that she had started to forget who she had been a few short weeks ago. Some other person she now hardly recognized. And were all her friends going to die because of it? She stood with Fenris in silence for a long time, until the fire started to die out.

“It ends when we say it ends,” Tessa repeated, and then quieter, “Is she right, Fenris?” she asked never taking her eyes off the faint glow of the dying fire and the ashes, mounds of them, so much that it made her throat clench up.

“No.”

“You sound very sure.”

“I am,” he said, and Tessa was grateful, because as usual with Fenris, his words had a decided ring of truth. This time she actually wanted to believe him.

“Do you know who she’s talking about? The Doctor she’s referring to?”

Fenris didn’t speak for a long time. “Here’s the thing, Scion. She spoke the truth. But she did it deliberately. Everything she said was true but well calculated. She didn’t lie because she knows that the truth can be more powerful. There is a much bigger world out there, and there are forces much more dangerous than The Monster, but it doesn’t change the fact that The Monster is who you are fighting right now. You cannot allow her to draw your focus to other things, or he will kill you and it won’t even matter what those other things are.”

It was a huge answer that Tessa hadn’t expected and was not sure she knew how to process. “The slow knife,” Tessa said to herself. Fenris pricked his head up.

“What did you say?”

“Something Robin said before. The slow knife. That it’s what would kill me. A slow blade. That I wouldn’t even know it had already begun to penetrate. It’s already begun, hasn’t it? And I didn’t even notice.” Tessa felt a wave of desperation fall over her, everything seemed oppressively dark. Fenris didn’t speak, which didn’t make her feel any better. His lack of protest seemed like tacit agreement. Tessa turned and blinked at him. “The war you mentioned before.”

“Yes.”

“So who is he, The Doctor?”

“I’ll make a deal with you. I will tell you as much as I can after we take care of The Monster.”

Tessa chewed on her lips and looked back at the fire, now just embers being devoured by ash. “Alright,” she said,
and nodded her head resolutely. She moved toward the house and then paused. “Thank you.”

Fenris reached out to her as she headed up the porch stairs.

“Give me your hand,” he said.

She looked at him, her brow furrowed. Her thankfulness did not extend to hand holding. “No.”

He did something between a growl and a sigh of annoyance and took her hand anyway. He held it open between them and put something in her hand, then closed her fingers around it.

“I’m giving this to you. It could help,” he said. Tessa opened her fingers and blinked at the thing in her palm and then looked up at him, unsure. “Take care of it. They’re hard to come by. But it could be the difference,” he said. Tessa’s mind reeled with possibilities.

“Yes,” she said, understanding his meaning.

He started to go and then turned around.
“I think Circe is controlling the Mortal zombies as well.”

“Why?”

“I killed something, back before you came to Lore. It confused me at the time because it was Mortal, but it stunk of Story magic. I think she has raised those mortals and turned them into zombies. It also might explain why we don’t have an actual zombie apocalypse on our hands,” he said.

“Right, like, if they weren’t being controlled, we’d have more victims and random attacks. A town overrun by a literal zombie apocalypse.”

“I’d think so.”

“But why wouldn’t she want that? Wouldn’t it just grow her army?”

“My guess is she’s spread a little thin.”

“And maybe adding to the army means she can’t control it.”

“Perhaps.”

“So you think killing her will take out both The Draugr and the Mortal zombies?”

“It can’t hurt,” he said. Tessa looked back at her hand and when she looked up, he was gone again. She sighed. When it came to Fenris she could not see straight, and she never understood what he was doing. He had all but led her and Robin to their death today, abandoning them just before the shit hit the fan. And yet, he had seemed concerned for their (or at least her) well-being when he arrived, driving like a madman and breaking down a door to get to them.

And now he spoke with her truthfully, gave her sound advice, and this gift. And it
was
a gift.

She might never figure him out.

Things were quiet.

Too quiet.

It was killing her.

It was so obviously the calm before the storm that would probably actually kill her, that she was going crazy. Her thoughts and fears, and most especially everything Circe had said plagued her. Fenris had been right to focus on The Monster, but with no Monster to actually fight her mind was consumed with horrible ‘what ifs.’ She was wound so tight she sprang at the slightest noise, the slightest aggravation. Hell, she didn’t even need aggravation, she’d freak out at
nice
things. She’d even cussed at Fenris when he showed up with construction dudes to fix her house.

It was like without a monster to hit, she would hit anything.

In the bustling hallway after the final bell, Tessa fidgeted with her locker, deciding if she even cared to bring any of her books home. Would she do her homework? She couldn’t imagine it. It sounded drastically unimportant. Why do your homework when you probably weren’t going to get to finish your junior year?

While still tuned out to most everything around her, whatever superhero power she had that warned her
about shitty things about to happen kicked in and gooseflesh broke out over her arms.

Tessa’s locker slammed shut at a blinding speed, and only her advance warning and lightning quick reflexes helped her get her hand clear of a blow that probably would have broken her hand.

“Hey, freak,” said a handsome jock in a letterman’s jacket with his arm around a perky blonde. Tessa turned to look at him and found he had a whole little attractive group with him.

“Do you actually want something?” Tessa asked, “Or is this just some kind of a ‘
you’re bored so you’re trying to drum up something interesting to do’
kind of thing?” She kind of hoped he started something, it would be good to take out her aggression on someone that deserved it, even if she did have to pull her punches. Her response was clearly more aggressive than he was used to and so he turned around, the rest of his entourage following suit.

The group slid back toward her, menacing and less pretty with every step. Just as Tessa was balling up her fist and wondering how to gauge the appropriate amount of superhuman force needed to take down a non-Story, seventeen-year-old jock in one punch, they all stopped and shifted their gaze to something just
behind her. Tessa blinked and turned. Nash was standing behind her, leaning against the lockers, his arms crossed, his jaw set.

“Hey, Nash,” the jock said.

“Hey, Tyler,” Nash said. “Can I do something for you?

“No, no problem here. See you around.”

“Yup,” Nash said. And the group walked away. Tessa couldn’t decide if she was pissed or thankful. But since her emotions had been all over the map, she went the wrong way.

“What was that?” she snapped. Nash, of course, took the high road.

“Just trying to help out,” he said.

“I don’t need a hero,” Tessa said, sulking.

“There was nothing heroic about that,” Nash said. “That was just being a good friend.”

Tessa hung her head, feeling like an even bigger jerk. “You’re right,” she said and then, “Thanks.”

“I’ll take what I can get,” he said and then touched her chin gently, tipping her head up so he could look her in the eyes. His eyes flitted to Tessa’s scar, still red and angry, like Tessa herself. “You okay?”

Tessa pulled back from his hand and let her hair fall back across her face. “Oh yeah. That. Totally fine—fell in the, um, shower,” she said pathetically.

“Your shower have
claws?” Nash asked, skeptically, but not unkindly.

“Guess it does,” Tessa said, trying to make it sound like the end of the discussion.

He got the hint and lowered his hand, but kept her gaze. “I’ll see you later.”

Tessa nodded and went looking for Micah and Brand. They could calm her down if anyone could.

On the bus, Tessa listened absently to Micah and Brand’s chattering. Tessa nodded occasionally but it was obvious she was just placating them. Micah finally jabbed her in the ribs.